The Breakup

[wendell westfall]

D70s 70-200VR 2X @400 1/2500 f6.3 ISO400 -1/3EV

Yesterday was a lovely clear day and, how sad, these cormorants were breaking up -- at least they reminded me of a couple too proud to say "I'm sorry". (Is it bad sign when I begin to think of "my birds" in human terms?) Well, anyway, I tried to make this image look good with a slight crop, then playing with the clarity, brightness, contrast, NR and sharpening sliders in Lightroom. How did I do? I'm thinking the water is not quite right, which is usual for me. Otherwise it looks pretty good to me. But I'm real interested in what I might do differently. I'm not sure it shows in my work yet, but I do feel like i'm learning a lot here . . . and your help is always much appreciated.

Wendell

[Stefan Minnig]

Wendell,

There's always something to learn here. Nice shot. I like that the birds are almost in the same pose swimming away. The crop works for me, although I wonder what it would look like with some of the top and bottom taken off? The blue in the water looks off to me as well. I'd mess around with the color sliders for blue and aqua in LR, playing with hue, saturation and luminance. You could probably desaturate the blues for starters and go from there.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Wendell,

We are all learning from each other here, so don't be shy about posting your work. As a very wise man once said, there will always be people above you and below you. :) I like your concept and capture, and this is just my take on how to make it better. I suspect that the water at Bolsa-Chica probably looked more like this, and I cropped a bit from the top and bottom and added a bit of sharpening. I altered the color in PS CS3 using Hue/Saturation and taking out a lot of cyan and adding red and yellow. We want to call attention to the birds and not the background. This was a real quick edit and I'm sure others will do better, but I hope this helps.

-KP

[Lance Peters]

Hi Wendell - Nice eye contact from both birds.

I would reduce the cyan/blue saturation in the water - select both birds and apply a tad of sharpening, crop somr from the top and botton - to create more of a pano and whilst I was at it would maybe clean up some of the spots in the water. :)

Keep em coming

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Wendell,
I like the composition and capture. you captured both subjects with very good head angles...fully agree with Mr. Peters on the techs. and like Kerry's repost with the color adjustment on the water...looking forward to your next one...:cool:

[Alfred Forns]

Great comments !!... and excellent repost Kerry !!!

Stefan the crop part would have been my first step in editing before diving in to correct the color, tightening the image does make it stronger.

Wendell when your going after multiple birds dof becomes a problem. If they are close like here just close down as much as you can, if the are further might go the other way opening for rendering the rear bird oof !!!

[wendell westfall]

My thanks to all -- I think I'm getting it. I reviewed many of my previous posts (where water is involved) and found them to be overly bright and saturated compared to others' posts. I'll try to correct that in the future. It may be simply that my "eye" is not there yet.